Our online lives are organized by computer algorithms that select and recommend advertisements, search results, news, and online social interactions. These algorithms are often closely-guarded secrets kept by Internet companies. But researchers, users, and the public might legitimately need to know how these algorithms operate.

In this talk, Christian Sandvig (University of Michigan), Karrie Karahalios (University of Illinois), and Cedric Langbort (University of Illinois) use the Facebook newsfeed as an example to ask how users can investigate how these algorithms work from the outside.